A few days ago I heard a front-bench politician say on the radio that our problems were not just that people had lost trust in the parties, but that they (ie we) were also losing trust in the political process itself. Quite right too.
It is naïve to suppose that there was golden age in which all political actors were Simon-pure and imbued with the spirit of public service to the exclusion of all else. But the last 30 years have been pretty dire, with Tony Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq on a false prospectus; MPs claiming expenses for bizarre items such as a duck-house in a moat; Liberal Democrats agreeing to increase student fee having not just promised but pledged not to do so; the lies on the side of the Brexit bus; the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan while the foreign secretary sunned himself on holiday; and now the ducking and diving to withhold evidence from the enquiry into the tackling of the COVID pandemic.
I can see a glimmer of sense in the argument that to disclose all the evidence requested could reveal embarrassingly incorrect advice or personal things best kept private (but why are people discussing personal things on their work-telephones anyway?) However, surely the need to a full disclosure of any errors in dealing with this pandemic in order to better prepare ourselves for the next should transcend these considerations. Throughout the pandemic the government repeatedly pleaded that the circumstances were unprecedented. In that case they require an enquiry with unprecedented powers to analyse what went wrong and why.
The charge sheet will be long and the government will not be found to have boobed an everything, but here is a selection of items on which we deserve an answer:
1. The pandemic was not unprecedented at all: scientists predicted something similar and in 2016 a Cygnus exercise was conducted to discover how to be prepared. Why were its recommendations largely ignored?
2. On the international table of Deaths per 100 000 population compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the worst performing country is Peru with 665. One of the lowest amongst European countries in Norway with 93. The UK comes somewhere in the middle with 314, fewer than the USA (341) but 24% worse than France (254), 50% worse that Germany (203) and almost twice as many as Ireland (176) You wold have thought that being an island, and having secured the famous control of our borders, we should have performed rather better. Why didn’t we?
3. The Test and Trace system, contracted out to the private sector, was an expensive flop, whereas the Vaccine rollout, performed by the NHS, was a great success. Is there an obvious lesson to be learned there, or are there mitigating factors?
4. Millions if not billions were wasted on buying equipment (eg PPE) from firms with little expertise in producing it but who had access to a VIP line composed of those who appeared to have friends in high places. Can those responsible be identified and held to account?
5. The Treasury spent billions on subsidising firms to keep them in business during lockdowns. Some of the firms were specially created in order to receive the bounty. Who was responsible, can they be held to account, can any of this public money be retrieved, and what procedure should be used next time?
In an enquiry of this importance there can be no room for redactions to save the faces of those responsible. Answers in the not too distant future, and the sight of a few heads rolling, may do something to restore some of our confidence in our political system. A whitewash will simply deepen our cynicism
The pandemic was not unprecedented at all: scientists predicted something similar and in 2016 a Cygnus exercise was conducted to discover how to be prepared. Why were its recommendations largely ignored?
ReplyDeleteThey weren’t, initially; they were followed. But then the government panicked and started doing ridiculous things like banning people from leaving their homes. It is important that the inquiry establish how that change came about.
You wold have thought that being an island, and having secured the famous control of our borders, we should have performed rather better. Why didn’t we?
We already know the answer to this one; it’s because before the virus came to international attention in March 2020, infected people had already entered the country one dozens of occasions (often coming back from ski resorts in northern Italy where the virus was rife) and the disease was already spreading through communities in the UK. At that point closing the borders wouldn’t have done anything; it was already too late.
The Test and Trace system, contracted out to the private sector, was an expensive flop,
The tracing system was a flop but the testing system, where the majority of the money was spent, was a massive success. Whether it was necessary to produce distribute and process so many test is arguable, but you can’t deny that it was managed and (after a shakey start) remarkably quickly.
whereas the Vaccine rollout, performed by the NHS, was a great success.
Of course without the private sector, the NHS would have had no vaccine to distribute. And also of course many many private logistics and transportation companies were involved in the distribution, not to mention private chemists like Boots and Superdrug doing the actual delivery of vaccines. The NHS only deserves partial credit.
In an enquiry of this importance there can be no room for redactions to save the faces of those responsible.
Absolutely. And you fail to even mention one of the most important things: by massively increasing the level of quantitative easing the Bank of England fuelled the inflation that is now dominating our economy and destroying living standards.
Sorry I can't respond in detail to your comment but it am on holiday with only a tiny telephone keyboard on which to tap out a reply. Lady Hallet has an interesting task in sorting out the truth
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